Death of Drosselmeyer
by LadyDivine91
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley are tasked with watching Warlock and Adam over the Christmas holiday, which results in some mildly disturbing mayhem in the Dowling's garden. Aziraphale x Crowley


_**Notes: Written for Drawlight's '31 Days of Ineffables' prompt 'fire', but I squished the ones before it in, too XD And yes, Warlock still calls Crowley 'Nanny' just cause. Don't worry about it. XD**_

"How's this, Nanny?"

Crowley stops his sculpting to examine his young protégé's work. "That looks _amazing_, Warlock!" he gushes, rewarding the boy with a pat on the shoulder. "Absolutely brilliant!"

"What about this?" Adam asks, pulling attention to his own masterpiece.

Warlock rolls his eyes, but when he spies Adam's creation, they go wide with awe. "Wow! That's _gruesome_!"

"Thanks!" Adam says, glowing with pride over receiving Warlock's rare praise.

Crowley claps Adam on the back approvingly. "It's perfect! Only I'd add a touch more blood."

Adam scans his carefully crafted scene, perplexed. "Where?"

"Everywhere! Can't have too much blood I always say!"

"Yeah! More blood!" Warlock cheers, running to where they keep it, _buckets_ of it, and popping open a fresh one.

"Anthony J. Crowley!" a voice soars above the sound of the boys laughing. Crowley cringes when he hears it bellow out his full name. "What on Earth have you been _doing_!?"

"We're making snowmen, Mr. Fell!" Warlock intercepts Crowley's scolding – a habit he's gotten pretty good at over the past few days that Crowley and Aziraphale have been watching him.

"And where, pray tell, did you acquire all this snow?" Aziraphale gestures at the garden around them, which had been green, albeit coated with a thin layer of ice, that morning when he left for the bookshop, but is now covered in over a foot of fluffy white snow despite not a single flake falling for days. He glares at Crowley, whom he's certain must be behind it, but the demon shakes his head.

"Don't look at me!" he says, hands up in defense. "I had no part in it."

"Warlock's dad did it!" Adam gathers up a snowball, preparing to launch. "He imported it! It showed up in huge trucks a few hours ago!" He throws the snowball at Crowley's head, aimed between the demon's eyes. It almost lands, too. But at the last conceivable second, it makes a sharp left and smacks Warlock square in the jaw, sending him giggling to the ground. Adam snickers, pleased with the outcome regardless. "How sick is that?"

"Seeing as it's covered in blood, noxious." Aziraphale takes a step back as another snowball whizzes past his face, missing him by inches and heading straight for Adam. "Did he import that, too?"

"No. It's cranberry syrup."

"There was tons of it in the storage cellar!" Warlock calls from behind a mound of snow as he starts construction of a fort. "We can eat it after!"

"I wouldn't recommend that. Not unless you want to spend Christmas in the loo." Aziraphale walks around the boy, removing himself from the line of fire. "Crowley, my dear, Mr. and Mrs. Dowling didn't ask us over here to deface their property. We're supposed to be watching the boys!"

"Point of order," Crowley says with finger raised, "you left us to fend for ourselves for around seven hours."

"_Four_ hours. I was waiting for an important delivery. And I left under the assumption that a responsible adult was in charge."

"Now, you see, that was your first mistake."

"_Crowley_!"

"_Aziraphale_! Look, we're not defacing anything. I'm exposing these boys to _culture_."

Aziraphale laughs, so hard and so sudden, he nearly chokes. "_Culture!_? You call this _culture!_? It looks like you've been performing an autopsy!"

"We haven't! We've been re-enacting scenes from The Nutcracker?"

"_The Nutcracker_?"

"Yes."

Aziraphale stares, knocked for six. "As in the _ballet_? Not some new Christmas blockbuster starring Jean-Claude Van Damme?"

"Who?" Adam and Warlock ask together.

"Yes, the ballet," Crowley replies, moving Aziraphale aside as snowballs start to fly.

"Which part are you re-enacting?" Aziraphale snaps a wayward snowball out of the path of Crowley's face and back at its thrower. "Where Clara massacres the Sugar Plum Fairy?"

"Is that in there?" Warlock asks hopefully.

Aziraphale shoots the boy a look. "No!"

"Aziraphale, love, I know what this must look like to you, but what we've been doing goes beyond making a mess." Crowley catches a snowball and tosses it at Warlock. "We've been bonding over a work of classical and cultural significance. I would think that you, of all people, would appreciate that."

"Mmm …" Aziraphale leans back to let a snowball fly by. "Maybe. Still, it looks like an unnecessary waste of good syrup that I'm going to have to clean up …" Aziraphale's eyes, surveying the full extent of the damage, land on a group of snowmen a short distance away that had escaped his notice the first time around. He squints at them, blocking his face with a snap. "Is that … Herr Drosselmeyer that those children are gleefully trying to set on fire?"

The snow battle stops short at the angel's question.

"Yes," Adam says sternly, stacking his ammunition higher and ducking down behind it.

"But … _why_?"

Warlock answers this time, wearing the same stoic expression as his friend. "He knows what he's done."


End file.
